The Diary of Elliot Parker

I just had a huge fight with Clover. Well less a fight more a giant messy parting.

So I know I haven’t really mentioned this, before, not in depth, but there are somethings that you simply don’t want to hold attention to. Clover in all of this mess and obsession with her ex has been talking to someone that I have nicknamed the poster child for domestic violence (I’ll probably just shorten that here to the poster child). It’s not nice, but he earned it. He is very volatile as a person.

You see, for months now Clover has told me about the conversations she has with him. He gets nasty and mean a lot. Fights with her a lot. Sends the boys on her social media abusive messages and tells her to delete them. He is possessive and rude and starts fights over nothing. He calls her rude names and puts her down and the things she loves.

So as you can imagine I have a low opinion of poster child.

So at the start of the other week I was in a really great mood, I had been out to a concert with my brother and it was great. The next day, I called Clover to check in and see how she was doing. Well I got to talk for a few minutes about the great mood and awesome concert before she took over and started talking about boys.

She started to talk about the week she had had, she had felt off and down most of the week and the day she started to feel better the poster child brought her right down by getting nasty with her. So of course I asked the question. “Why are you putting up with it?”

She ignored the question and kept talking about him, she made excuses, like “he is stressed”, “he has problems”, “it’s not his fault it was how he grew up”. Well that didn’t help really did it? Because I repeated the question, she said, “I like him, sometimes he is so sweet and nice as pie. When he is nice I start to think that things will get better and that we might stand a chance, I think about saying yes to a date with him. Then he turns nasty and I think maybe not.”

My response was simple, that is abusive. Again she makes an excuse.

It got worse after that, so much worse.

So that is when I warned her that friends and family will start walking away if she continues to keep choosing the abuse over being happy, being healthy. Her response was that no one else really knows. That put me in the middle of a big choice. To placate her and make her feel better as usual and have my advice ignored, which I knew was what she wanted and had expected. Or I could stand up for what I hoped was the right thing. Not just for Clover but for her daughter. To walk away from an abusive person who actively hurt her on a regular basis.

So there I was stuck between the rock and the hard place doing what was right and doing what was asked of me, expected of me.

So that’s when I said she can start choosing between her family and friends now and him. She had the choice between, now, I don’t want to just say myself or my friendship like a conceited person, but more the unlimited support I have tried to give her, the cheering up sessions, the chatting, the whole of what the friendship was. Something akin to sisters. Or someone who actively made her feel low and kept her unsteady and damaged her self-worth, self-love, self-respect.

Her response in those seconds after I told her she can start choosing now, “oh… I dunno” like it was hard, like she had to really think for a long time because the attention she got from the abuse that she could get from people was that much of an important aspect. I hate to say it, but it does sort of haunt me, but that is what made up my mind. I told her she had clearly made her choice and I said bye and that was it. Years turned to dust and water.

That’s the thing, it’s not the first time I had to tell her to make a choice. At the start of her relationship with her now baby daddy she was flirting with his brother. A lot. I had enough and told her to make her mind up which brother she wanted. Well after that she blamed me for her flirting around blowing up in her face. Didn’t talk for months.

This time though, it feels different. For a start, it’s not me telling her to decide what boy she wants. It’s me asking her to make a choice of what life she wants.

The thing is, and I know I should be feeling really bad, the day of the ultimatum was hard. It was hard because there was a guilt that I made her choose, because I needed to get closure. The exposure to her moods, her highs and lows and her being treated like that, it did affect me. It reminded me too much of my own past, and I had hoped she had learned from my mistakes so she never had to experience it herself. And yet there she is, choosing to put herself in that position.

When I went through it, a lot of who I was died. Coming out of it, felt like I had been burned alive and this is what remained. Eventually I healed and so have the scars. But she saw that. I had hoped she would have chosen to not experience it.

Mind you for a long time I have hoped she would choose a different path in general. To follow a dream that didn’t depend on a boy or romance or attention. Something she could be passionate about. But hey, she chose the boy.